The invention relates to a method for producing hydrocarbon fluid through a well or well cluster of which the trajectory is at least partly defined by a well trajectory optimization algorithm which is coupled to a finite difference reservoir simulation program that represents a hydrocarbon fluid containing reservoir as a set of grid cells with a specified permeability and fluid content.
Such a method is known from SPE paper 105797 “Adjoint Based Well Placement Optimization Under Production Constraints”, paper SPE 105797 presented by M Handels, M J Zandvliet, D R Brouwer and J D Jansen at the 2007 SPE Reservoir Simulation Symposium, Houston 26-28 Feb. 2007.
The selection of the optimal well locations and trajectories is a challenging and important step in any field development plan.
Selecting the most optimal well trajectory is an arduous task, which is usually done manually.
SPE paper 105797 discloses an automated iterative well trajectory optimization technique wherein vertical pseudo wells are used which produce or inject at a very low rate, and thus have a negligible influence on the overall fluid flow through a hydrocarbon fluid containing reservoir.
A disadvantage of the automated well trajectory optimization technique according to SPE paper 105797 is that it is configured to optimize a well trajectory only for two-dimensional placement of a vertical well in a relative simple reservoir since the method involves moving a vertical virtual well iteratively in horizontal directions until an optimum production is achieved.
A further disadvantage of the automated iterative well trajectory optimization technique known from SPE paper 105797 is that it requires a large amount of iterative calculations to optimize the positioning of the vertical well trajectory of the virtual well and that it only allows to optimize production from a vertical well.
It is an object of the present invention to further optimize the automated well trajectory optimization process such that it also can be applied to curved and non-vertical wells and to reduce the amount of iterative calculations to optimize the trajectory of a well or well cluster.